The Villanova Football Problem...

[NovaBall]

Probably the hottest issue among Villanovans these days is what to do with football.

Villanova currently fields a FCS football program (a form of division 2). Alumni and fan support is horrible (less than 2,000 fans attended the team's home playoff games). The team is decent on the field, but considering there are only a dozen or so fully funded FCS schools, it is very easy to be decent on the field.

The problem that exists is the program is a financial disaster and is crippling the school. The program costs over $6 mill per year to fund and brings in under $1 mill per year in revenue (compare to butler whose program only costs $850k to fund or gtown at $1.5 mill).

Due to the financial issues, sports like soccer and lacrosse are no longer fully funded, and even basketball is taking a hit. Basketball revenue at Villanova is over $10 mill per yr, yet the operating budget is only $6 mill. While $6 mill is a solid amount for hoops, the fact that $4 mill is being stolen straight from hoops to fund a football program that nobody cares about is causing an uproar.

Why this is coming to a climax now is because the basketball team is trying to renovate their on campus arena. However, the football tough guys are insisting that basketball must "wait their turn" for a pavilion renovation as the school is about to blow over $50 mill on a football only practice facility.

Also, nova competes in the colonial athletic conference. This conference is filled with a hodgepodge of blah schools. Most alumni want nova to join the patriot league for academic prestige (after the ivy league the patriot is probably the country's 2nd best academic conference behind the Ivy, especial for undergraduate). The thought is that maybe William and Mary and richmond would joing nova in the patriot. Maybe even uconn (would incredibly enhance uconn's academic profile compared to the conference of americans) if uconn were to de-emphasize football.

People are also upset that we are neglecting soccer and lacrosse, two sports where nova's demographics could result in top level national programs if fully funded. But instead we are using almost 25% of the athletics budget on a sport that nobody at the school wants, and the costs are going to rise with the football facility.

There are some nova fans who are still insisting that we invest in football so we can join the acc. Nobody with a brain is in that camp though. First, it's not realistic. Second, villanova in the current big east is a better position for basketball than the acc. It's a better fit and places nova in a better position to compete at a high level than what the acc is offering most of its schools (outside of duke, lville, unc, and the occasional team having a good run like Uva right now, the acc is not the best platform for many of its schools such as bc, Pitt, clemson, wake, etc...). Villanova should be in the conference that gives it the best platform for success, not just join a conference because jay bilas likes it better.



Anyway, that's the hot topic at nova right now. I personally don't think they should totally drop football, but I would like to see us go non-scholarship and join the patriot league so we can fully fund soccer and make sure our hoops program is receiving every penny it needs.

[NovaBall]

By the way, I think nova has the highest (or one of the highest) athletic operating budgets among big east schools, so it's not like the school is broke. It is more a displeasure with the allocations of the funds rather than a cry for the poor house.

[Jet915]

50 million bucks for a DII football facility???? CUT CUT CUT.......and fund Lacrosse and Soccer, two sports the Big East is actually good at and cares about.

[Burrito]

Isn't the Patriot League now giving out scholarships for Football? Georgetown plays football in that conference but decided against giving out scholarships. So they are destined to be a bottom feeder there.

[NovaBall]

$10 mill for the football practice facility is coming from a private donor (kid on the team's father runs ultimate fighting)

They could still go full scholarship in the patriot league, or they could follow georgetown's model. But at least the patriot league has the academic prestige, so the school would gain something out of it. Right now they get nothing from football.

Them at riot league has an average operating budget of $4 mill, while nova is at$6.5 mill form footbal. That extra $2.5 mill could be used to fully fund soccer and lacrosse.

[NovaBall]

Big east soccer is up there with the ACC and PAC 12 as the top conference.

Xavier made the Sweet 16. Georgetown and .creighton made the elite 8. Providence made the final four. St. John's struggled but they are a traditional national power.

Yet we don't even offer a full team of scholarships. Why? We are spending our money on other priorities.



Really a shame as Villanova's demographics make it a perfect candidate to compete nationally in soccer. Also soccer players tend to be better students than football players and you don't have to worry about the whole concussion thing as much. And soccer is a booming sport right now, in ten or twenty years we would be very happy if we invested heavily in soccer today. The investment needed is fairly small in relation to the benefit.


Between soccer and hockey it is amazing how much Providence is outclassing Villanova athletics these days. Good thing we have basketball or they would be totally dominating us. Really no excuse for it except poor allocation of resources internally at villanova. Time for a change.

[Michael in Raleigh]

I understand the budgetary concerns. Setting that aside for a moment, I do think it's too bad that Villanova doesn't have much of any enthusiasm for the football program. I get it that it isn't the highest level of college football, that it is kind of J.V., blah blah blah.

I graduated from Appalachian State, where football is our bread and butter. We won three national championships at the FCS level and were in the thick of the playoff race for at least 12 of our final 15 seasons at that level. We, as fans, enjoyed every bit of it. We had crowds in excess of 30,000 in games against "big names" like Wofford, Georgia Southern, and Elon, and we pulled for our very good team because, quite simply, it was fun. We're still pulling for them now that we've moved to the Sun Belt, even though we know there's a ceiling to how high we can get in that world.

I was disappointed when Villanova hardly had any fans show up during their national championship run, which I believe was in '09. I guess I don't understand why being supportive of a very good basketball team has to mean being completely apathetic about football, especially when the team is very, very good at what it does in the level it does it.

Again, I understand the budgetary concerns. The team is high-cost, low-revenue. Ambitions to join the ACC, obviously, would be absurd. Still, it's a little sad that a good team could be downgraded or eliminated. (I will grant you, though, that the Patriot League would be a good affiliation academically.)

[NovaBall]

Basketball is perfect because it is a weeknight event or a two hour game on a Saturday. The games are a ton of fun, especially the ones downtown at the NBA arena.

College football in general has little fan following in the northeast, where most of jova's fans are from. football in the northeast is a Sunday experience, not a Saturday experience. Heck, major league soccer has a bigger following than any college football in the northeast at this point. People don't generally relate to Alabama and Georgia, or Oregon or the rust belt schools that dominate college football. There is simply no appetite for the sport.

When you start talking about lower level college football, such as fcs (or even temple or uconn) it gets even more ridiculous how little people care

The other thing is there are only a handful of teams really competing at fcs football. For the amount of money villanova spends on football compared to its peers the results are actually underwhelming. So we are constantly ranked in fcs football, who cares? There's no real competition.

When I was at Villanova the football team was excellent. They had the top team in the country with Brian finneran and then they had the Brian Westbrook team. I don't know anybody, including myself, who ever attended any games or followed the team at all. Just not worth the time.

[Hoyas]

didn't folks complain big time back in the '80s when Nova dropped football and forced them to bring it back?

[NovaBall]

didn't folks complain big time back in the '80s when Nova dropped football and forced them to bring it back?

30 years ago people complained, but then it got brought back as a division two sport and thirty years later it still hasn't caught back on. Literally nobody goes to the games. We don't even draw two thousand fans for home playoff games. And this isn't a new thing, I was in school in the 1990's and nobody went to the games back then either.

If you are going to play a sport at a division two level, that is fine, but the school needs to realize that and allocate its resources accordingly.